Persons in homes, places of work, and in other facilities use various technologies to report emergencies. For example, a homeowner can report a fire, break-in, medical issue, or other emergency by dialing 911 on a telephone to connect to an emergency operator. Home alarm systems also typically provide devices located in a facility that can send a message in response to a user-identified or sensor-identified emergency. These conventional emergency notification techniques have been most advantageous where the user or alarm device uses a traditional line-based telephone service provided to and associated with the facility. Because such phone service is typically provided for the particular facility, the recipient of the emergency notification is able to quickly and accurately identify the facility at which the emergency is occurring. Such localization, reliability, and convenience are critical components of an emergency response system that may slow down response time if non-existent or faulty.
Many facilities are no longer associated with traditional line-based telephone service. Many facility users are switching to instead rely upon Internet and cellular networks for voice communication services. Unfortunately, such Internet and cellular networks can be unreliable and provide limited or no capabilities for allowing localization. Wireless phone systems, for example, generally do not adequately permit a control center receiving emergency messages to reliably identify the location of the facility in which an emergency occurred. Dead zones or poor coverage areas also make it difficult for wireless phones to report emergencies. Both of these conditions contribute to slower response times. Messages sent over the Internet, including messages that use Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), use a public network with reliability issues and security vulnerabilities, making the Internet and VoIP communication poor options for sending emergency messages.
The use of other types of networks at homes and other facilities is also generally growing. For example, utility meters are commonly located at a facility such as a house or apartment unit to measure consumption of natural gas, water, and electricity. Emerging technologies related to utility usage and metering are providing utility communication networks, such as wireless mesh networks, that allow utility meters to send utility consumption data to a utility company's receiving device or devices. However, because of bandwidth, power, and other constraints, use of such networks has generally been limited to the specific purpose of allowing utility measurement and usage related communications.